Prozdor Curriculum

The Prozdor curriculum is robust and includes a wide range of options; there is truly something for everyone in our classrooms.

Hebrew Language

The Prozdor Hebrew program offers two tracks: two consecutive hours on either Sunday morning or Tuesday evening, or three hours a week (two hours on Sunday and one hour during the week). This was designed to allow as many students as possible to enroll in the Hebrew program and still participate in other activities inside and outside Prozdor. Makor Hebrew is offered exclusively on Sundays for two hours.

The Hebrew curriculum is based on the proficiency approach to teaching Hebrew, a nationally recognized, cutting-edge system for teaching a foreign language.The proficiency approach emphasizes that each school create its own curriculum based on student needs and interests, and that student needs be consistently evaluated on how they function with the language — not what they know about the language.

Using this approach, we have developed various thematic units to maximize the learning in the class and achieve Hebrew-language fluency. The coordinator of the Hebrew program has worked closely with Professor Vardit Ringavld and Shlomit Lipton from Hebrew at the Center, a national training institution for the advancement of Hebrew studies, in the development of the new curriculum. HATC has brought this approach into the Jewish day-school world, including at both the Jewish Community Day School and the Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston. All Prozdor and Makor Hebrew teachers will be trained in this approach and involved in a variety of professional-development workshops.

"Heritage or inheritance" — "morashah or moreshet." In Torah, "heritage" is the land, the teaching, the tradition. In exchange for the land, the Israelites also were to lead lives that were admirable and strengthened the world around them.

What is our moreshet, our inheritance? Throughout the high-school years, you will explore this question at Prozdor, learning in classrooms, field trips and retreats about yourself and Judaism. In 12th grade, as elders of the Prozdor community, you will synthesize not only what you have received from Judaism, but also how you will use what you have learned to give back to the Jewish community. You will be asked to consider what it means to strengthen our world through Judaism.

Moreshet, Prozdor's senior seminar, is pressure-free and, at the same time, focuses on the unique time between now and what's to come. Working as a community, all together and in small groups, you'll explore possible future roles in the Jewish community and how to use this precious inheritance. You'll be engaged in the following discussions and activities:

Crafting a personal definition of education

Learning to create and implement a classroom lesson

Developing skills in community-building and experiential education

Preparing to be camp counselors, youth-group leaders and Jewish school educators (all great part-time jobs during college)

You'll be encouraged to work during the year as a paid intern in an educational setting: in a Prozdor classroom, in the Prozdor office, one-on-one with a special-needs student, in your synagogue or in a local Jewish organization. Moreshet includes opportunities to reflect on and learn from the internship experience. At the close of Moreshet, you will receive a certificate of completion that acknowledges that you have participated fully in the Prozdor Moreshet Seminar in Leadership and Learning.